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Thursday, May 5, 2016

The annihilation of cultural and religious heritage is genocide's autograph. Landscapes fashioned by monuments, buildings, and houses of worship are obliterated into rubble when blood-thirsty men wish to exterminate the souls--not just the bodies--of an entire people whom they hate.

Panelists share evidence of ISIS atrocities with
the international community from the chamber of
the UN Economic and Social Council.

A United Nations report published in 2014 expressly recognized the link between heritage destruction and atrocity crimes, and last week a UN congress meeting in New York brought this distressing feature into focus.Titled Defending Religious Freedom and Other Human Rights: Stopping Mass Atrocities Against Christian and Other Believers, the UN congress revealed shocking first-hand evidence of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by ISIS against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.The Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN assembled the international event in the wake of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's unexpected declaration last month that accused ISIS of committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shiite Muslims as that term is defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and its enabling statute in the U.S., the Genocide Convention Implementation Act.Carl Anderson, CEO of the 1.9 million member Knights of Columbus (K of C), the largest lay Catholic charitable organization in the world, testified that Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities have been repeatedly subjected to rape, murder, property confiscation, slavery, and forced expulsionby ISIS.It is
estimated the number of Christians has dropped from 1.5 million to 200,000 in Iraq, and from 1.5
million to 500,000 in Syria, Anderson declared to the international congress with a notable sense of urgency. He
warned the community of nations that indigenous Christians with ancient ties to
the region "are at risk of disappearing entirely," declaring that
"[r]eligious minorities have an indisputable right to live in their
homeland."

Along with attacks on religious
minorities, jihadists have destroyed churches, monasteries, mosques,
and shrines, including St. Elijah's, Iraq' oldest Christian monastery; theal-Kabir Mosquein Aleppo, Syria; aYazidi shrinein Sinjar, Iraq; and numerous
Chaldean, Armenian, and Greek Catholic churchesin Syria. The American Schools of
Oriental Research'sCultural Heritage Initiativesregularly tracks these and other episodes of
vandalism.

A reporttitledGenocide Against Christians in the
Middle East, which the K of C presented to the State Department in March and submitted to
the UN congress last week, lists the names of 1,131 Christian
victims murdered in Iraq. The nearly 300 page document specifically identifies 125
attacks directed against churches. An envoy sent by
the charitable organization to Iraq in February spoke with 44 refugees,who supplied direct eyewitness testimony of
atrocities that had been committed.

Attorneys L. Martin Nussbaum and Ian Spear, together with Catholic University
law professor Robert Destro, authored a legal briefbuttressing theGenocidereport. They concluded that the
evidence formed "probable cause to believe that ISIS has committed
genocide, and that the Department of State should make a referral to the
Criminal Division of the Department of Justice and the Security Council of the
United Nations."

One congress panelist reminded the global participants that the preservation of cultural and religious
heritage is important, but safeguarding human lives is even more urgent.Fr.
Douglas Al-Bazi, a Chaldean Catholic priest, who held up a blood-stained
shirt as evidence of his kidnapping and beating at the hands of jihadi extremists, asserted that the forced immigration of Iraqi Christians is
causing Christianity to disappear in the region. While he said that outside observers might argue that Christianity should survive in Iraq "for a
culture and historical reason," the cleric pleaded that the
Christians of Iraq "are living and breathing human beings, not museum
pieces." "My
people are losing hope," he worried aloud. "Soon we will be small
enough for the world to forget about us completely."

Participants attending the UN Congress in NY.

A missionary in Aleppo, Sr. Maria de Guadalupe, told
about the persecution of Syrian Christians, but she added, in the face of
danger, they have courageously exclaimed, "The
experience of death has made us understand the sense of life."

Thebrave and tearful voice of a young 15 year old Yazidi girl,
meanwhile, described the repeated rapes she suffered, committed by the violent hands of
ISIS militants after kidnapping the girl and her family two years earlier.

Panelist presentations concluded with
Egyptian-American attorney and human rights advocateJacqueline Isaac, Vice President ofRoads of Success, describing horrific details of the enslavement, rape, and torture of women and
girls, which can only be characterized as gruesome and inhuman. Isaac called for the perpetrators to be held accountable by the
International Criminal Court.

The Vatican repeatedly has expressed grave concerns
over genocide as well as its coupling to the destruction of heritage. It is therefore no surprise
that the Holy See sponsored the UN congress. Referring specifically to the
conflicts raging in Syria, Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East and North
Africa, Pope Francis in his most recent Christmasmessagecalled attention to the
"atrocities" and the "immense suffering" that "do
not even spare the historical and cultural patrimony of entire peoples."
In July,the pontiffdecriedthat "a form of genocide is
taking place [in the Middle East], and it must end." In aspeechdelivered to the UN General Assembly
inSeptember, moreover, the pontiff
emphatically professed:

I must
renew my repeated appeals regarding to the painful situation of the entire
Middle East, North Africa and other African countries, where Christians,
together with other cultural or ethnic groups, and even members of the majority
religion who have no desire to be caught up in hatred and folly, have been
forced to witness the destruction of their places of worship, their cultural
and religious heritage, their houses and property, and have faced the
alternative either of fleeing or of paying for their adhesion to good and topeace by their own lives, or by
enslavement.

Among the
many participants in last Thursday's congress were Ambassador Ufuk
Gokcen of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; Lars Adaktusson, the
European Parliament member responsible fortheEP resolutioncondemning the mass murder of
religious minorities by ISIS; and the parents of Kayla Mueller, an aid worker
kidnapped and killed by ISIS in Syria.

The congress took place at a time when parallel legal efforts to curb terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria are in motion. They include the unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution 2199, which aims to restrict ISIS and Al Nusra Front from raising money by means of cultural
heritage trafficking, oil smuggling, and kidnapping. The recently passed Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act, likewise, is federal legislation that House and Senate leaders hope will curb smuggling of illegal Syrian artifacts into the U.S. That legislation awaits the signature of President Barack Obama before becoming law.

To help preserve lives and heritage in Iraq and Syria before they are wiped out, readers may contact In Defense of Christians, Roads of Success, the Knights of Columbus, or similar organizations that seek to help persecuted religious minorities in the region, which include Yazidis, Shia and Sunni Muslims,
Turkmen, Shabaks, Sabean-Mandeans, Kaka’e, Kurds, and Jews, as well as Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Armenian, Catholic, Coptic, Evangelical, Melkite, and Orthodox Christians.Video of the UN Congress on Defending Religious Freedom and Other Human Rights appears below, courtesy of United Nations Webcast.

2015 ABA Journal Blawg 100 Honoree

2014 ABA Journal Blawg 100 Honoree

2014 Daniel Webster International Lawyer of the Year award given to Rick St. Hilaire

"Rick St. Hilaire, who has become an authority on cultural heritage law, received the International Law Section’s 2014 Daniel Webster International Lawyer of the Year award at an Oct. 30 reception in Manchester, hosted by Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green." - NH Bar News, November 19, 2014

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